


That Last Little Light

by polche



Category: Devilman (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Akira is dead, Alternate Universe, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Other, Ryo has a pottymouth, Ryo is a hikikomori hacker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-11 14:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13526523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polche/pseuds/polche
Summary: First, Ryou's father, the well-respected archaeologist Asuka Sousuke, comes at him with a knife and kills himself instead. Then when he moves back to Japan where he grew up, when he decides to reconnect with the one person he ever met he could call a friend, he’s informed the guy’s entire family died in some bizarre serial murder spree.It's a little suspicious, to say the least.





	1. [hacker voice] "I'm in."

**Author's Note:**

> Short thing exploring a possibility in which the demons murder Akira when he's younger to try to prevent the effect he has on Ryo/Satan. It, uh, doesn't go exactly according to plan.
> 
> I'm sorry the chapter titles are all memes. (I'm not really that sorry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I drew this version of Ryo.](http://no-decaf.tumblr.com/post/170572097650) I'd like to get a picture for every chapter of this fic eventually, but for now, this is what I've got. Enjoy!

Ryou's room was completely dark save for the computer screens that cast a bright blue glare on the face of the teen sat in front of them. Three thin LCD monitors surrounded him like an old sitcom father’s newspaper, a large flat-screen TV mounted on the wall loomed behind them. The large screen was filled with an ever-changing selection of global newscasts, the two monitors on the sides with a collection of rapidly-scrolling chat rooms and social media accounts. All of them were set up with an algorithm to catch anything that contained the phrases “brutal murder”, “mysterious disappearance” and “superhuman physical ability” and a variety of synonyms, in a number of languages. Though he flicked glances at the three other screens with the intent and intensity of a predator on the hunt, the majority of his attention was on the screen in the middle, currently showing no more than an unassuming, simply-designed browser window and a similar-looking floating loading bar slowly creeping towards 100%.

It announced its completion with a small chime, and the browser page loaded. Within it, someone else’s desktop appeared, along with a short, wide window at the bottom. Whenever Ryou hovered over an icon, the window in the bottom brought up what the keylogger recorded when that program’s windows had been active. After days of preparation, it took him only minutes to log into his target’s work email account and unlock all of its secrets.

All things considered, cracking the head of national security’s own security hadn’t been as hard as he’d expected it to be. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Greasy and full of knots, as expected, but at least with his neglect, it had grown long enough to be tucked out of the way behind his ears.

He didn’t even remember the last time he’d taken a proper shower, although he doused himself with cold water every few days when his body got too stiff. The logical part of him told him that sitting in his office chair all day, not even leaving for the catnaps he took was bad for him. But the rest of him didn’t care. His health was secondary, the truth would always come first. It was a good thing the secretary he’d inherited from his father kept him fed, otherwise he’d have probably starved himself to death. He’d had to invest in a pair of tinted computer glasses just to make sure he kept being able to read after the third day straight, otherwise his eyes just told him to go fuck himself and made everything blurry. Now he could at least read, though they still stung.

“Fuck off,” he mumbled to his own eyes as he pushed the shades up and rubbed his eyes. “Deal with it, this shit’s important.”

The algorithm was already hard at work, bringing up dozens upon dozens of windows with email chains.

“Damn, that’s a lot...”

He was grateful his program also automatically copied everything to two different clouds, just in case. Everything would surely be purged if his attack was ever found out, and even if they didn’t it’d take a while before he’d sifted through everything.

But. His eyes, primed for this by years of obsession, zeroed in on that word that kept appearing, over and over.

Demons.

“Fuck yeah.”

His face didn’t move. He’d never been much of one for expressions, usually stuck in an unreadable neutral. But his eyes burned, and not just with exhaustion or dehydration.

Proof.

He had fucking proof.

Proof this goddamn demon bullshit went all the way up to the goddamn top. They existed, people knew, and they didn’t do a single fucking thing but choke that information down. Either the head honchos didn’t want to deal with it, or they didn’t want people to panic, or - most likely, and he’d bet his life on it - they _were_ demons.

Once he compiled everything, he’d send it to every news organization on the planet. They wouldn’t be able to hide any longer.

Then a name flashed by on the screen, and the world stopped.

 

**`Fudou Akira` **

 

He scrambled to his feet, accidentally kicking his office chair to the floor, and his shades fell off from how wildly he moved, but he didn’t care, it wasn’t important. He searched the emails for mentions of Akira’s name instead, because he needed to know what the fuck Akira had to do with demons.

Yes, he’d had his suspicions.

First, his father, the well-respected archaeologist Asuka Sousuke, comes at him with a knife and kills himself instead. Then when he moves back to Japan where he grew up, when he decides to reconnect with the one person he ever met he could call a friend, he’s informed the guy’s entire family died in some bizarre serial murder spree. It was a little suspicious, to say the least.

Even if the deaths weren’t directly connected, even if he was just being paranoid after his father’s bizarre suicide, something was definitely weird, and the most suspicious person was that creepy secretary he was sure had been fucking his father, who ended up his legal guardian after his death.

So he’d played the reticent mourning son, made easy by his generally blank and unfriendly demeanor, and locked himself in his room with his father’s notes most of the time, and other than making sure he ate, the woman hadn't stuck her nose in where she shouldn't have.

Demons. Fucking demons. His father had been researching goddamn demons. He didn’t have any concrete proof, because it all burned up with him when he set himself on fire to stop himself from doing something unforgivable to his darling son, but circumstantial evidence was all over the place.

At first he looked by himself, but he quickly got frustrated with his slow pace and taught himself to code a program that would look for him, so he could scan only the relevant things. But there was so much, and the deeper he dug, the deeper the rabbit hole ran, and before he knew it, he was fifteen years old with a record of cybercrime longer than he was tall, and had barely left his room in a year.

And now he found out the demons had called an actual motherfucking _hit_ on the only friend he ever made.

“They’ll pay. I’ll make them fucking pay for that,” he told himself.

Merely exposing them wasn’t enough anymore. He didn’t give a fuck about anyone else, humans as a whole were weak and easily manipulated, and probably deserved whatever plan the demons had for them. But Akira was different. There was a strength to the kindness he showed in his tears, his quiet determination to help. Akira was the sunlight and the rain that gave life to the barren earth.

And demons had killed him. In return, Ryou would _obliterate_ them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made up Asuka sr.'s name by trying to figure out what Fikira's name means (since he plays the same role) and then picking a Japanese old man name with a similar meaning. Google translate could only find something for Swahili, though, nothing for Russian. The closest thing to "fikira" it could come up with that actually translated into something was... "Shakira" (Shakira). So that was an interesting diversion!
> 
> Ryo's personality is three parts OVA dub, one part Crybaby, and the rest just a complete and total mess. I love it.


	2. Hey There Demons, It’s Me, Ya Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryo goes to a party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can see, I've updated this to have four chapters instead of two now. The last chapter will be a short epilogue which I'll post at the same time as the next chapter. I don't know how long ch3 will be exactly. I have a rough outline, but this chapter turned out way longer than I planned, so I'm not going to say anything with certainty. But the constraints of this fic at least are clear to me.

The nearest sabbath in both place and time was easy to find. The city’s seedier community boards were buzzing with talk of the next one: it was in some rich asshole’s basement just on the other side of town and would start around midnight, which was - Ryou checked the time in the corner of one of his screens - half an hour ago. Getting there in short order was something else, with Ryou having been a complete shut-in since he returned to Japan, and his secretary owning the only car he could easily steal. Walking would take entirely too long, so it seemed like the only ways he’d get there was through human interaction, which he didn’t like, but he supposed it would be a necessary sacrifice.

A thorough but efficient shower later, Ryou threw on a clean pair of sweatpants and an oversized hoodie, and followed his phone navigation to the closest station.

He was glad for his face’s natural immutability, otherwise his distaste for the infestation of parasites swarming around in his personal bubble would have given one teenager or another with too much to prove and too little to lose cause for a fight, and for his drab, casual clothes, as they helped him blend in with the homogenous masses, protecting him from those that might take interest in his somewhat unusual appearance.

As it was, the only one who even noticed him was an infant who passed him in its mother’s arms, and she quickly left the busy space when the child started wailing.

Ryou checked his reflection in the mirror. Sure, he looked a little ragged, he wasn’t too vain to admit that, but despite the murderous rage that sustained this extended foray into enemy territory, he couldn’t find himself looking like anything other than a teenager who spent a few too many sleepless nights cramming for a test. That wasn't too far from the truth, either. Although with his pale skin and the deep bags under his eyes, maybe in the right light he did look a little like a ghost.

It shouldn’t matter. He shouldn’t look too out of place, and even if he did, it was a gathering of hedonists, selfishly focused on their next bit of excitement. They probably wouldn’t even notice if he stabbed the guy next to them to death, as long as he didn’t interfere with _their_ high. In a way, that was something of a pure way of life, he supposed.

He was relieved to finally escape the bustling station, rushing into the sacred quiet of dark alleyways. Cramped and overcrowded apartment buildings made way for separate houses that had room to breathe as he approached the more affluent part of the city, and it became easier and easier to avoid having to even see another bipedal insect. He knew that would all be over once he actually arrived, but hopefully he’d manage to stuff himself with enough drugs fast enough that it wouldn’t bother him anymore.

Guided by his navigation app and posts on the board, he eventually came to a hatch at the rear of a mansion that lead to what may have at one point been intended as a Western-style wine cellar. After opening the hatch, Ryou buried his hands deep into the safety of his hoodie pouch, one hand clenched firmly around his knife, and descended into hell.

The first thing that hit him was the noise. Even ignoring the hypnotic trance that blasted through the room, that echoed off the concave roofs and drilled into your brain, the party was loud, and a year of training himself to follow as many conversations as would fit on his screen meant he was painfully aware of every erotic platitude, every half-coherent story, every drunken shout. The second thing that hit him was the smell. Sweat, sex and alcohol mixed together in a particularly pungent perfume. He managed to stifle a dry heave and resolved to get himself blitzed as fast as possible so he wouldn’t have to put up with it for longer than he had to.

A makeshift bar stood off to the side, an errant shaker left on the counter amidst a wide variety of different liquors an indication that they served cocktails earlier in the night before everyone got too high to care. Ryou weaved through the wasted masses to grab the first bottle his hand could reach and threw it back. It tasted like he imagined gasoline would, a kitchen cabinet’s worth of cleaning supplies distilled into a clear liquid that burned his throat as it went down.

“Making up for lost time?” A woman in her early twenties leaned heavily over the counter and tucked a stray strand of her long dark hair behind her ear. Her voice was like a wind chime, bright and clear, and utterly out of place among the deep, wet bass thudding through the room. “Take it easy, sweetie, you’ve got _all_ night.”

With a bright red lipstick smile she placed a small pill engraved with a pentagram on the counter in front of Ryou. He swallowed it and washed it down with the glorified ethanol.

“Not interested.” The visceral repulsion he felt at the way his voice cracked as he spoke unfortunately meant he still had to wait a little longer for the mind-altering substances to kick in.

“Just make sure you don’t overdose,” the woman said with a shrug, causing her hair to fall back over her shoulder into her face. She gave a small sigh, smile still on her lips and leaned further over the counter. She reached out to place long thin fingers with black lacquered nails on the collar of Ryou’s hoodie. “Isn’t it too warm in here to wear something like this?”

He should have expected that, yet he found himself unsure how to respond anyway. While the idea of extended interaction with another human being sounded about as appealing as sticking his dick in a blender, every record on the Black Mass states participants need to let go of their inhibitions to allow possession, and sexual arousal was an effective way of clearing one’s mind.

And he supposed there was something to her. The way her dark hair and eyes stood out against her pale skin reminded him of the classical Japanese beauties, someone who could easily be a model if she wanted to. And the way her low-cut purple dress hugged her curves, accentuated them, was something the long-neglected primal part of Ryou could appreciate. It wasn’t like he’d spent much time thinking about girls - or anyone, really -  and puberty had left him alone for the most part so far, but since he at least found her physically appealing he may as well give it a shot.

So he gave her a crooked smirk and leaned into her hand, putting his own next to her on the counter to support himself since he wasn’t sure how well she would be able to. “This is a terrible place to be subtle. Fortunately for you, and unfortunately for me, I’m still sober enough to take a hint.”

“Oh, that won’t do,” she said, her voice a low hum. She covered her mouth for the duration of a giggle, then loosely wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in close. “Let’s fix that.” Her warm breath ghosted over his face, and he had to force himself not to grimace. Being in control of his expressions was important to him, even if there was no way she would notice. Instead, he relaxed his face, smothering the tension in his muscles. He slackened his jaw, let his lips part just a little, just enough for her to take advantage of.

Her mouth was warm and wet and tasted of flesh and alcohol. Ryou didn’t feel anything about it. He pretended to, squeezing out a small noise as she pushed her tongue in to coil around his own. She’d apparently managed to pop one of the pills into her mouth, and this was her way of delivering it to him.

In lieu of gratitude, Ryou mimicked her movements with his own tongue, convinced he was doing it wrong despite her enthusiastic nonsense vocalizations.

He took stock of his cognitive functions while the woman buried one hand in his hair and let the other one roam down his back. A slight haze had started to creep into his head, but he still found himself able to follow the various conversations happening around him, and he was clearly still able to think analytically.

Fine motor functions? His tongue seemed to have no problems moving dexterously, if the resulting sounds were anything to go by. This was probably the most exercise it’d gotten in a year, actually. He tested his fingers by playing with the woman’s hair and the knife in his pouch at the same time. No problem there either.

The verdict: Ryou still had an iron grip on himself. Maybe it wasn’t too surprising, but it was troublesome nevertheless.

When the pill completely dissolved, he pulled away and the both of them leaned into each other for a moment just to catch their breath.

“I like a confident girl...” the woman murmured low into his ear.

It was the hair, probably. And the mildness of his puberty not sculpting more angles into his features probably didn’t help, either. He didn’t really care one way or another how people saw him, but people tended to get aggressive when reality conflicted with their expectations.

People were so frustrating to deal with.

“This isn’t doing much for me,” he said with a sigh. “If that’s all you’ve got...”

He attempted to casually free himself, but she held on tight, a fistful of his hair in one hand, her other stroking long lines along the ridge of his spine over his clothes, and let out a mournful moan.

“Aww, it’s not a party if you’re not having fun...” She took her hand out of his hair, traced the shell of his ear with it, his jawline, his neck down to the collar of his shirt, further down until it rested on the subtle swell of his chest. “Then what’s more your speed?” she breathed into his ear; ran her soft lips, still wet with both their spit, over it; gave the most delicate little nip.

Teeth were something his body could apparently appreciate, somewhere far away. Not enough to express, but then she hadn’t used them very decisively.

“Bite me.”

A short gasp escaped her. He was sure that if he could see her face, her eyelids would be fluttering. But most importantly for him, her fingers dug into him as her hands tensed, the targeted pressure sending a slight shiver through him. When she actually took his nape into her mouth and bit down, he exhaled involuntarily. Still, it all felt dull.

“Are you even trying?”

A sharp inhale turned into a breathy laugh. The woman pulled back over the counter, dragging him with her, her bloodshot eyes glazed over from a cocktail of chemicals his coarse, curt commands just contributed to. “I’ll do better,” she said as she hoisted him up on the counter.

He filed the woman’s obvious kink into a folder labeled “unimportant” in his mind, choosing to focus instead on the mild satisfaction he felt finally being able to look down on her and the much stronger frustration that he was still unrelentingly lucid. Then, when the woman put her hands on him again, he filed those away too.

She raked her nails over the skin on his sides, along his ribs, following the sensitive curves of his chest under his shirt, raked her teeth across his throat where his pulse pounded strongest, and he tried to become one with the feeling, let adrenaline become arousal, but her nails and teeth were just too blunt; pathetic instruments that could never hope to pose an actual danger.

“Your ‘better’ is shit.”

What a waste of time. The woman’s hazy smile was tinted with confusion, and when he pulled away again she finally let him, slowly taking her hands back from under his shirt, black-nailed fingers stained with red.

Of course. After hedonistic depravity the most important component in a Black Mass, and still found here in far too small supply. And his frustrations had been mounting, his body teased with a poor imitation of what it craved, desperate for some kind of release, even if it was just to destroy someone else’s fun. He could fix both his problems in one simple move.

He let the facsimile of a smile creep on his face, a cold copy of the real thing, and jumped off the counter. With the woman already completely forgotten, he grabbed the nearest person now in front of him, likely a salaryman who’d been looking for a good time after working late, by the collar. He had his other hand in his hoodie pouch.

“I want to see it...”

The man’s breath hitched in his throat at Ryou’s words, as well as his appearance, the way the man’s eyes scanned his body. Ryou wasn’t even wearing anything particularly exciting. Humans really were pitifully weak in every single way.

Ryou fidgeted with the man’s shirt buttons as a distraction, knowing he’d be fully focused on that, rather than what his other hand was doing, leaving him completely defenseless and vulnerable.

“...A demon.”

The blade slid in easily. Ryou dragged it down along the man’s sternum, cutting through his shirt as it traveled south, too short to hit anything vital. He dug his fingers into the wound, tore it wide and then pushed the man away to look for the next person who let their guard down, leaving dark red fingerprints on his white dress shirt.

He got five people before one of them fought back, grabbed him by the hair and neck and tried to hold him still while her friend threw a punch. But he didn’t need to breathe to flail his arms, nicking her arms with his knife until she let go and tried to pin his arms instead. The punch landed, but with his head freed, he had another weapon in his arsenal, and with no reason to hold back, it wasn’t long before Ryou spat out a mouthful of skin.

Ryou’s sudden act of violence had spawned not just two camps - one that cheered for every one of his attacks, and one that cheered every time someone else got a lucky hit in - but also a few copycats with a similar lust for blood.

The sound of laughter slowly drowned out the heavy bass, at first just his own hollow rasps, but soon a plethora of subhuman sounds, beastly roars, cackles and screeching as the cellar’s guests painted it red.

When Ryou was certain he was one of, if not the last human left standing, he climbed back onto the bar, overlooking the scene of chaos he created. He took a deep breath and screamed.

“ **WHICH ONE OF YOU FUCKERS KILLED AKIRA?** ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like some feedback, if anyone would like to give it, regarding Ryo's characterization in this fic. If it's internally consistent, and makes sense with the rest of the devilman extended universe. Thanks in advance!
> 
> My personal hc for Ryo is that while he may have been fully male the first time around, after that the existences of Asuka Ryo and Satan can no longer be considered separate, and so Ryo ends up some form of intersex in every other cycle. But then, I'll be real with you guys, I'll add an intersex character any chance I get.
> 
> I'm kind of glad I finally wrote a character that could conceivably fall under the ace umbrella this time. It's nice to not have to rely on context clues how an experience is supposed to feel for once, especially since there are actual people who know what things Are like when it comes to having a sexuality, as opposed to with something like dragons and that stuff.  
> In fact, this Ryo's deal is pretty similar to my own, in that the whole libido thing just... isn't there, and any kind of sexuality just feels very disconnected to my physical self. That said, in his case I think it's more dissociation and compartmentalization than anything else, although I wouldn't be able to say if my own case has any underlying cause.
> 
> Party lady is styled after Fudo Jun, although other than visual appearance, I doubt they're much alike. I didn't do too much research, but Jun seems like a wholesome kind of girl. That said, I did take inspiration from the whole Satan situation in that for why this character might be so inclined to please Ryo. And, uh, a preference for sharp, no-nonsense blonds.


	3. I Won't Hesitate, Bitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryo understands the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! <3

In the end, Ryou spent three weeks convalescing in his room. A hospital visit would have raised too many questions, so he splinted his arm and leg himself and simply slept more than he had in years. Loathe as he was to admit it, the rest he usually denied himself probably helped him process some of the more incongruent details he’d uncovered.

He knew he was prone to paranoia. An antisocial disposition and a mind sharper than most meant he was always reading between the lines, peering through the holes in the masks people invariably wore. Everyone had an ulterior motive.

(Except Akira. Akira had always been the exception.)

But the more information he gained, the more the obvious conclusion stared him in the face.

The first piece of evidence: Akira’s “random murder”. A targeted assassination.

On the surface, there was nothing to be gained from his death. At the time, he was nothing more than an average twelve-year-old Japanese boy, living in the suburbs with his parents, both of whom were archaeology professors at the local university. No criminal record; no outstanding performance; no media appearances. Nothing to be found anywhere on the internet that identified him or his parents as anyone of note - or even anyone at all. And Ryou had looked.

The second piece of evidence: Secretary Jenny.

An uncanny, perpetually cheerful yet intimidatingly professional woman who had been at his father’s side since before he’d married Ryou’s mother. Apparently she’d been the one to introduce them. She and his father had an arm’s-length acquaintanceship until his birth, but soon after Jenny was promoted to his personal assistant. Even an archaeology professor of Asuka Sousuke’s renown was still trapped by the constraints of his occupation, so after the loss of Ryou’s mother’s additional income, they’d had to live smaller. And yet Jenny was always there, a personal assistant and practically a live-in maid, even though the math did not check out. And she remained after Ryou’s father’s own death as well. It was basic biology that he could not be the result of their affair, so for a long time Ryou had been confused and wary about her devotion to him.

But he’d finally uncovered the third piece of evidence: He had escaped the equivalent of a demon mosh pit after explicitly drawing attention to himself, not only fully human, but practically unscathed.

Sure, after he’d made his demand, a scorpion-like hexapod demon with a beaked head in place of the stinger and a vaguely yonic mouth along its underbelly filled with rows of teeth had slammed him off the countertop and slobbered acid spit all over his hoodie until some sort of bull-man with arms that looked like a metal band logo grabbed him and threw him against a wall. But the attempt at intimidation fell a bit flat, since Ryou had seen the floor, littered with enough gore and viscera that he’d never be able to look at a plate of spaghetti bolognese the same again.

Compared to the ease with which demons tore both human and one another’s limbs off, ripped into skin and crushed skulls, the sheer lustful mirth they displayed as they bludgeoned one another into a reddish paste, reached into an orifice or created one to pull out a still-moving organ and eat it, sliced anything that got even marginally too close into ribbons - compared to any of that - emerging with little more than bruises and a broken bone or two was more than a little suspicious.

It was the bartender woman crouched over him, long and thick black hair from all over her body shielding him from sight, who told him. Other than a slight, strange reticence, there was no change in her behavior even now that thick, curved horns had sprouted from both sides of her head and in pairs of two along her spine, and her mouth had become a snout too full with teeth. Her thin, rectangular pupils - all four of them - were directed aimlessly at the ground just beside his head.

It was a demon with the appearance of a snapping turtle, a prideful coward that bragged as he hid behind his shell. Even when it came to demons, he was one of the more sadistic ones, not helped by his desperate need for recognition. The human guise he wore was that of a portly police officer, the same one that investigated the murder in fact. The woman relayed it in a hushed whisper, almost too quiet to hear. Two of her pupils darted up and side to side while the others suddenly fixed on Ryou. Her long nose scrunched up in a snarl, revealing her uncountable pearly whites. Somehow, Ryou could find no fear in himself.

“Give ‘em Hell.”

And then she stood suddenly, running into the mass of monsters, coating herself in the carnage. Ryou ran home on adrenaline, ignoring his injuries until he could tend to them in private. Then he slept.

He slept for two days straight, during which he was pleased to find from his security cameras that Jenny continued her usual ritual of offering him food three times a day regardless of whether or not he accepted it. He resumed his own normal activities once he woke up as well, since he knew he shouldn’t give her any more reason than absolutely necessary to be suspicious.

He would not waste the advantage the demon woman had given him.

While he recovered, he kept up his vigil at his computers, the attention he’d previously had to spread out to cover as wide a net as possible, now focused like a laser onto one target, not a single one of its moves small enough to escape his notice.

Kaneki Masayoshi. What a joke.

Its daily work was consistent: As a senior officer, it would foist any hard work off on its subordinates and take the praise when they did a commendable job, frequently took its coworkers off to get drunk just a little before its shift was up, treated its patrols themselves as a power trip and insisted on frisking entirely too often to be reasonable.

It’s free time activities were similarly predictable. It blew most of its salary on alcohol and escorts for Sabbath-like parties most days, and stalked off with its demonic brethren to wreak havoc on humankind the rest of them.

It was truly an appalling specimen and regardless of how it would end, Ryou would make sure he didn’t need to share space on this earth with something like that any longer than he had to.

Thinking about it rationally, the most likely outcome was obvious. The demon, Jinmen, was three times Ryou’s height, equipped with a hard shell and thick skin, a sharp beak and the ability extend its limbs, equipped with palm pads hot enough to melt steel, further than one would expect. Ryou, in comparison, wasn’t even a fully grown human and had spent a good amount of his formative years denying his body the necessary substances for proper development, like sleep, proper nourishment and exercise.

However, those were not the full extent of the facts. The Sabbath proved that. There were two additional facts that Ryou was sure he could use to gain an advantage despite his fragile human body.

Fact one: Demons were unwilling to cause him significant harm.

Fact two: At least one demon believed that he could cause significant harm to another demon.

These two facts, proven at the Sabbath, could be explained by one simple theory: Demons believed there to be something special about him. This theory also explained why Jenny hovered around him and why Akira was assassinated.

It was an unreasonable theory, but the only points against it were mere common sense, so Ryou’s plan revolved around it. If he ended up being wrong, that’d be fine too.

Kaneki Masayoshi drank the heaviest on Saturday evening, since he had Sundays off. On Sundays, Jinmen usually roamed around sparsely populated areas looking for new people to torment, faces to add to its shell, still in a drunken haze from the night before. Ryou managed to compile a list of areas that could be arranged in a three-by-three grid Jinmen liked to visit in a pattern akin to the Paces of Yu, making it easy for Ryou to predict where he would be next.

So when he could finally move his limbs painlessly again, that’s where he went. An abandoned subway station, fallen into disrepair after too many locals moved to more profitable parts of town, now frequented by rebellious teens looking to practice their graffiti hidden from the watchful eyes of the law. He pretended to be one himself, again choosing to drape himself in a thick, large hoodie (knife included), this time with a backpack filled with paint canisters slung over his shoulder as well. Compressed gas combined very well with high heat.

It didn’t take long for the sluggish slaps of leather soles on the concrete floor to echo through the hall.

“Hey kid, you sure you should be in here all alone?” Kaneki Masayoshi’s low drawl sounded from the only exit. The other had long since collapsed after an unfortunate accident. The demon tried to give its voice a worried affectation, but it was obvious its face was contorted into a grin. Was it just because it didn’t think Ryou could escape or did it seriously think such a pathetic attempt would be convincing?

Ryou grabbed one of his cans, tossed it in the air and caught it with the same hand a few times before taking it firmly and spraying the wall in front of him. He may have had no artistic talent, but geometry did have aptitude for, and with a steady hand, the white mist expelled from the nozzle smoothly turned into a circular shell, two cylinder limbs on each side of the vertical axis, a cone each on the horizontal axis for the head and tail. He divided the shell into nines and sprayed dots in each. The lower middle got one dot, top right got two, middle left three, top left four.

“Numerologically, it’s beautiful,” Ryou said. “Even numbers in the outer corners, odd numbers in between, the middle in the middle, and every straight line of three numbers adds up to fifteen.”

“Kid, what are you..? Y’know I’m an officer of the law, right?”

Kaneki approached, but it would take him too long to reach Ryou while still pathetically pretending to be human, and his footsteps hadn’t changed.

Five dots in the middle. Six in the lower right, seven the one above, eight in the lower left.

He pointed at the empty square in the top middle. “This is where we are now. Fifteen kilometers south of the park near the police headquarters.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Kaneki’s drawl had made way for Jinmen’s growl.

“Did you think you were _clever_ to use this system? Even half-baked pattern recognition software could figure it out. The only reason you haven’t been arrested yet is because your bosses are just the same as you.”

The absence of any natural sound that didn’t come from scurrying rodents and the bare concave walls and ceiling amplified every unnatural sound. The sound of skin stretching to and beyond breaking, the sound of leather tearing, claws scraping on the concrete.

“A pathetic human thinks it can taunt me?” it growled, its approach impossibly slower now that it shed its disguise. “I’ll break your bones one by one and flay your skin off... I’ll find your momma and your poppa and I’ll do it to them too, make you watch... I’ll make you scream ‘til your lungs bleed...”

It finally came close enough that it could reach Ryou with a single leap, so he turned around, dropped his hood and gave a small smile, showing only a mild curiosity.

“I’d like to see you try.”

The demon froze, the look in its bulging, blank eyes reminiscent of that in the humans at the Sabbath during the orgy of violence. It took a second for Ryou to register it as fear.

Ryou was caught somewhere between laughing like a maniac and sighing in disappointment, none of it showing on his face which was still stuck in that plastic smile. He couldn’t give his emotional response too much thought, because Jinmen recovered quickly and shifted into its defensive stance, prehensile tail swaying at the ready.

The fear hadn’t disappeared, but it was covered with a perverted confidence. “You can’t do anything to me,” the demon said as its body swiveled to reveal its shell while its head kept its place.

“Ryou-chan...? What are you doing here...?”

The unbroken voice of a prepubescent boy tinted with exhaustion, fear and relief. Wild, dark locks of hair framing a round, pale face Ryou couldn’t forget even if he tried to.

Akira.

Just his face, eternally young, eyes devoid of life but otherwise pristine, preserved onto the demon’s shell.

Ryou had known. He’d seen it on the security cameras he’d hacked. He’d seen the kaleidoscope of changing faces around the consistent centerpiece. Ryou knew what Jinmen had done.

But seeing it in the flesh was different. This was Akira. Even if he was no longer truly alive, some part of his consciousness existed within the demon shell, some part of his body remained. He could talk to Akira again, he could touch Akira again, he could -

Jinmen’s raspy laugh interrupted his train of thought, brought him back to the reality of the situation and the gas canister he still held in his hand.

“You’re no different from the vermin I hunt for sport,” it jeered. “You can’t hurt your precious _friend_! You’re completely at my mercy!”

Ryou threw the can.

As expected, Jinmen caught it, its palms exuding their heat on reflex. Jinmen stared at the can in its hands for a second, caught by surprise at its rapid expansion until it exploded, leaving the demon temporarily blinded and dusted in a white mist.

“You little shit!”

Ryou didn’t give it time to process what happened, immediately taking more cans from his backpack, running towards the demon with one in each hand, fingers on the nozzle. Jinmen’s eyes trained back on him, its vision recovered more quickly than he expected, but still within acceptable limits. He was an arm’s reach away now, so he held the paint cans up to the demon and sprayed its face with both, coating its eyes with pigmented chemicals. It roared in surprise and anger, and brought its hands up to rub its face, leaving its bladed tail to swing wildly.

But Ryou had already passed the danger zone, he’d come close enough that the demon would hurt itself as well if it managed to hit him.

He didn’t have the time before Jinmen recovered again. He knew that. But Akira was right there, his face at eye-level, staring at him with tears in his eyes. He was only vaguely aware of his own hand reaching out, cupping Akira’s soft cheek and brushing away his tears with his thumb.

He knew he didn’t have the luxury to do this, Jinmen would know his position and strike - but it was as if time stood still.

“Ryou-chan, why are you crying?”

His vision was clear. His eyes weren’t even burning now that he’d had some proper sleep for once. He wasn’t crying.

“It wasn’t supposed to go this way.”

He wasn’t crying.

He was fucking _pissed_.

Akira’s empty eyes stared ahead as Ryou closed the small distance between them and softly put his lips to Akira’s in a final goodbye.

The knife materialized in his hand and he stabbed it into the plate of Jinmen’s shell, causing it to cry out, but Ryou wasn’t done. He used the knife as a climbing hold to get up onto the demon, then took it out and stabbed it into the wrinkled leathery flesh of its neck, once, twice, as many times as it took.

“L-Lord Satan, Your Excellency, please, have mercy -”

Ryou paused, letting the knife hover over the Swiss cheese surface of Jinmen’s nape. The slight reprieve was enough for the demon to mold its beak into an awkward, reverent smile and continue blathering in an attempt to get him to spare it.

“You know we only did it for _you_ , he would have been a distraction, he didn’t deserve your attention, we did him a mercy, really -”

Ryou plunged the knife back down into the demon’s skull. He straightened out, looking down blankly at the terrified demon oozing ichor onto his sweats.

“Don’t think you know anything about mercy. If you did, you’d know neither you nor I deserve it.”

The knife shone with an unearthly light that split Jinmen from head to tail and tore it in two, the wounds smoldering as Heavenly fire slowly consumed the demon flesh.

Ryou descended delicately from his perch, let his feet find purchase on the concrete again. He dug his cell phone out of the pocket of his ichor-stained sweats and called its only number. The demon still screamed in the background, vocalizations raw and moist from damage, but it couldn’t stop, the burning pain blocked out all other impulses.

The phone rang once, then was picked up.

“Jenny.” A short pause. “ _I know what you did_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kaneki Masayoshi (金気 正義): Money (also the first character in Jinmen), mind/spirit/energy, and justice. Also Kaneki is the surname of the main character in Tokyo Ghoul. Y'all son don't do names that aren't either entirely too on the nose, or too ironic for words.
> 
> Not-Jun Fudo's demon form was fun to think about, given her role in this story as well as Actual Jun Fudo's backstory. The weird bird-stinger scorpion demon has no relevance, I just liked being able to use the word "yonic".
> 
> Jinmen's pattern is the Paces of Yu, after the Lo Shu magic square. The myth goes the Sage-King Yu was chilling near a river, and a turtle came out with that pattern on its shell, even numbers in black (yin) odd numbers in white (yang), and this apparently gave him the knowledge necessary to dig irrigation channels that stopped China from flooding. I have no idea how any of that works, but I chose it because I needed to have a regular but not too humanly predictable pattern that had to do with a turtle. And it's just cool, you know?
> 
> Also, yeah, in this AU, Ryo isn't rich. Archaeologists generally make jack so unless Asuka sr. was already rich or Ryo's mom was, he wouldn't have any money in the bank already, and he's too much of a singularly obsessed shut-in to do any money-making himself.
> 
> The reason Jinmen calls Satan "Your Excellency" is because in the Shin Megami Tensei series, the demon Lucifer is called that by other demons in the series, (as well as Japanese fans), and, Lucifer and Satan aren't that different. ([In fact, I've styled this interpretation of Ryo in part after one of Lucifer's incarnations in the series!](https://twitter.com/Sploofson/status/960895995566526469))


	4. I Will Face God And Walk Backwards Into Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted ch3 like a minute ago so if you haven't read that one definitely go back and do so! It's got good stuff.

Satan stood on a pillar of mud that used to be a riverbank, the only thing left intact for miles. Everything else had been swallowed by raging seas, roaring fires, or the unrelenting violence they had inflicted on the earth. The piece of riverbank had been spared because Satan had willed it. They had protected it, as it contained the only thing in this world worth protecting.

Ryou had buried the last of Akira’s remains there, next to the decaying bones of the dog he failed to save as a child.

Satan had succeeded in wiping humankind off the face of the earth, and Ryou had succeeded in obliterating the demons. Now it was just them and the ghosts of their past at the end of the world.

Satan sat down gently and dug their fingers into the mud, as if they could still lace their fingers together with Akira’s. They craned their neck to look up at the endless expanse of stars above.

“Is this what you wanted?” they asked, as much of themself as of God above.

Predictably, no answer came.

With nothing else left to do, Satan waited, watching the vastness of the universe with the kind of patience only an ageless being could provide, until the light of the stars started to stretch and angels fell like meteorites out of the sky.

Finally, Satan stood again, faced their kin who looked at them like an imperfect mirror, bland and void of emotion. It knew nothing of the hate Satan felt for human- and demonkind alike; likely couldn’t even conceive of it. A pathetic doll made as a tool by God to aid in the projects He could actually love. Another concept it would never understand.

There was no reason Satan should either, but it was undeniable that they did. Nothing else could hurt so deeply, so purely, both so like and unlike any physical blow. Was this, too, God’s plan? After all, He didn’t make mistakes. But it was pointless to think on it. If there ever was a constant, it would be the ineffability of God.

They gave their last breath, a small sigh, and raised their head to their kin who stood poised implacably stiff as always.

“I’m ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the cycle begins anew.
> 
> Art for this fic:  
> [This version of Ryo as drawn by yours truly~](http://no-decaf.tumblr.com/post/170572097650) ([And my design influences](https://twitter.com/Sploofson/status/960895995566526469))


End file.
